Books reviews
5 Apr 2009 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaThree Days to Never by Tim Powers
In the 80's, an old woman dies in mysterious circumstances. Her son Frank and granddaughter Daphne find a few odd things in her house, such as the footprint of Charlie Chaplin and letters from Einstein. Soon enough various people including the Mossad, an European occult secret society, and an old man pretending to be Frank's long disappeared father start stalking and making contact with them, trying to put their hand on a Kabbalistic technology that could allow to change the course of History. Retroactively.
Tim Powers is one of my favourite writer of the fantastique flavoured kind of urban fantasy, that one that's build on atmospheric and narrative propelled, post-modern and blood & gore kind of magic, paranoia and confusion, so I was quite relishing the opportunity of reading another novel of his. In many ways, I found what I was looking for the storytelling, atmosphere, and the rough treatment the characters endured was on the line of what I'm used and enjoy from Tim Power. Not his greatest work, and a little bit too similar perhaps in storytelling structure to Expiration Date, but very decent and fun to read. However this is also a novel that makes a lot of use of Jewish elements in the storytelling and in the magical elements; and that's where I had a pretty large problem with the book.
On the good side, the book does present us, with the one agent of the Mossad that's develop most as a character, with a very human, touching and researched exploration of Jewish faith.
On the other hand, we have a book which main thematics is the idea of time travel as a mean to change how things went in the past retroactively, with factions thinking of how to use it to affect international politics ,they barely even mention WW2 and don't mention the Shoah at all. Nope, the Mossad wants to put their hand on this technology to ensure they win the Six Day War. Well, they already won it, but to make sure they win it better. It seriously bugged me all through the book, until it dawned on me that since the way the book handled those thematic was to say 'do not try to change the past to affect your present', it simply could not use the Shoah for this. I mean, try to make a case for how it's not worth to prevent the Shoah, and have fun watching how your audience will react? Yeah, I didn't think so either. But of course never even mentioning the idea weakens the book considerably. (That or he only thought in terms of killing Hitler and judged it was too much of a cliché for time travel stories).
There had a other problems, few and scattered which ended up adding to a significant amount. Our main characters are at least half ethnically Jewish, but never ever think about their identity and show any ink of cultural knowledge about it (at some point the little girl Daphne describes Hebrew writing as "Jewish writing"), even as the plot drives them to question who exactly are their parent and who they are. The grandmother who died, who is Jewish, we find out in the epilogue converted to the Episcopal Church a few years before her death. Oh, and the sympathetic Mossad agent guy? spoilers: Dies to save our main character, betraying his orders. end spoilers.
So in the end, although I didn't dislike the story in itself, it rather spoiled my enjoyment of it.
Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
The book that got the Hugo price the year I was born. Interstellar war, and the was it impacts the state of Downbelow which is right in the middle of it, and tries to stay neutral.
I'm... not sure how to review or summarise this one, sorry. I kind of struggled to read it, not because it was bad, but I guess due to a mixture of how depressing it was and some bad mood on my part. One of the thing I liked in it was the exploration of the situation of war refugees, the difficulty of handling it for the authority with various strains on resources etc. It's overall well thought of and pretty original in a SF novel. I had a couple of problems with the distribution of villanis and good guys amongst the characters, which felt a little bit too easy. I also found the ending pretty unbelievable.
Brazyl by Ian McDonald
Three stories set in three different times alternate : in the 17th century, a priest is charged to find another renegate priest in the jungles of the Amazon and bring him back for judgement, in current days Brazil, a TV producer is planning the new edgy, hit reality show; and in the future, over-monitored 2030's Brazil, an entrepreneur meets a quantum computer scientist and falls in love.
I did not dislike this book, but I can't really say I loved it either. I found the characters pretty lacklustre, the plot not very interesting at least not until it reached its last tier and the various threads finally started connecting with one another; and I found myself annoyed by the depiction of the setting. It was like Ian McDonald was trying too hard to fit in everything that could pass through our brain when we think of Brazil, in a way that was too exotificying : telenovela! cosmetic surgery! favelas! Slave trade! Weird religions, catholicism and cadomble and everything in between and in the mixing thereof! Capoeira! Football! and all overlaid with a large Portuguese and Brazilian specific vocabulary thrown in the text. The effect is very garish and intense and sometimes even oppressive, perhaps self aware but perhaps not enough, so it rather disturbed me.
And it makes me wonder retroactively about River of Gods, which I quite enjoyed at the time x_x;;
In the 80's, an old woman dies in mysterious circumstances. Her son Frank and granddaughter Daphne find a few odd things in her house, such as the footprint of Charlie Chaplin and letters from Einstein. Soon enough various people including the Mossad, an European occult secret society, and an old man pretending to be Frank's long disappeared father start stalking and making contact with them, trying to put their hand on a Kabbalistic technology that could allow to change the course of History. Retroactively.
Tim Powers is one of my favourite writer of the fantastique flavoured kind of urban fantasy, that one that's build on atmospheric and narrative propelled, post-modern and blood & gore kind of magic, paranoia and confusion, so I was quite relishing the opportunity of reading another novel of his. In many ways, I found what I was looking for the storytelling, atmosphere, and the rough treatment the characters endured was on the line of what I'm used and enjoy from Tim Power. Not his greatest work, and a little bit too similar perhaps in storytelling structure to Expiration Date, but very decent and fun to read. However this is also a novel that makes a lot of use of Jewish elements in the storytelling and in the magical elements; and that's where I had a pretty large problem with the book.
On the good side, the book does present us, with the one agent of the Mossad that's develop most as a character, with a very human, touching and researched exploration of Jewish faith.
On the other hand, we have a book which main thematics is the idea of time travel as a mean to change how things went in the past retroactively, with factions thinking of how to use it to affect international politics ,they barely even mention WW2 and don't mention the Shoah at all. Nope, the Mossad wants to put their hand on this technology to ensure they win the Six Day War. Well, they already won it, but to make sure they win it better. It seriously bugged me all through the book, until it dawned on me that since the way the book handled those thematic was to say 'do not try to change the past to affect your present', it simply could not use the Shoah for this. I mean, try to make a case for how it's not worth to prevent the Shoah, and have fun watching how your audience will react? Yeah, I didn't think so either. But of course never even mentioning the idea weakens the book considerably. (That or he only thought in terms of killing Hitler and judged it was too much of a cliché for time travel stories).
There had a other problems, few and scattered which ended up adding to a significant amount. Our main characters are at least half ethnically Jewish, but never ever think about their identity and show any ink of cultural knowledge about it (at some point the little girl Daphne describes Hebrew writing as "Jewish writing"), even as the plot drives them to question who exactly are their parent and who they are. The grandmother who died, who is Jewish, we find out in the epilogue converted to the Episcopal Church a few years before her death. Oh, and the sympathetic Mossad agent guy? spoilers: Dies to save our main character, betraying his orders. end spoilers.
So in the end, although I didn't dislike the story in itself, it rather spoiled my enjoyment of it.
Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
The book that got the Hugo price the year I was born. Interstellar war, and the was it impacts the state of Downbelow which is right in the middle of it, and tries to stay neutral.
I'm... not sure how to review or summarise this one, sorry. I kind of struggled to read it, not because it was bad, but I guess due to a mixture of how depressing it was and some bad mood on my part. One of the thing I liked in it was the exploration of the situation of war refugees, the difficulty of handling it for the authority with various strains on resources etc. It's overall well thought of and pretty original in a SF novel. I had a couple of problems with the distribution of villanis and good guys amongst the characters, which felt a little bit too easy. I also found the ending pretty unbelievable.
Brazyl by Ian McDonald
Three stories set in three different times alternate : in the 17th century, a priest is charged to find another renegate priest in the jungles of the Amazon and bring him back for judgement, in current days Brazil, a TV producer is planning the new edgy, hit reality show; and in the future, over-monitored 2030's Brazil, an entrepreneur meets a quantum computer scientist and falls in love.
I did not dislike this book, but I can't really say I loved it either. I found the characters pretty lacklustre, the plot not very interesting at least not until it reached its last tier and the various threads finally started connecting with one another; and I found myself annoyed by the depiction of the setting. It was like Ian McDonald was trying too hard to fit in everything that could pass through our brain when we think of Brazil, in a way that was too exotificying : telenovela! cosmetic surgery! favelas! Slave trade! Weird religions, catholicism and cadomble and everything in between and in the mixing thereof! Capoeira! Football! and all overlaid with a large Portuguese and Brazilian specific vocabulary thrown in the text. The effect is very garish and intense and sometimes even oppressive, perhaps self aware but perhaps not enough, so it rather disturbed me.
And it makes me wonder retroactively about River of Gods, which I quite enjoyed at the time x_x;;
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Date: 5 April 2009 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 April 2009 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 April 2009 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 April 2009 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 6 April 2009 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6 April 2009 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6 April 2009 02:36 am (UTC)The new library we've been forced to seek refuge in with the closure of our regular one has some Cherryh. I remember you rec'd me a couple of things by her in the past, but that was fantasy and they mostly seem to have sci-fi -- what would you say is worth reading as an intro to the author in that genre?
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Date: 6 April 2009 10:13 am (UTC)For Cherryh, I think I recced you the Foreigner series? It's long but goooood. Otherwise the Faded Sun Trilogy, the Morgaine saga (okay, that one is low tech enough to pass for fantasy in a way), or Chanur of course (warning: I read this one many, many, many years ago).
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Date: 7 April 2009 02:59 am (UTC)I enjoyed Downbelow Station when I read it, but that was years and years ago. The Faded Sun and The Chanur Saga are my favorite Cherryh books.
Regarding McDonald, I actually liked Brasyl quite a bit more then River of Gods, but that's just me. :)
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Date: 7 April 2009 08:13 pm (UTC)I liked Faded Sun and Chanur a great deal but my favourite so far is the Foreigner series!
hehe, I'm not sure if I'd still like River of Gods now! It's confusing!! Maybe I just didn't like those three books much because I haven't been so much in the mood for reading lately (lately being the last 4 months... >_>;)
What did you like about Brazyl / disliked about River of Gods?
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Date: 7 April 2009 11:54 pm (UTC)My biggest problem with River of Gods was that I thought the prose was rather clunky and hard to read. Sometimes it was almost a slog to get through. I also thought McDonald had too many characters and points of view than were really necessary. I did like the background and flavor of the story as well as the ideas he had on artificial intelligences.
Like River of Gods, I loved the background and flavor of Brasyl. McDonald does a good job giving an unique feeling to the book. And I also really enjoyed how he told the story in three different timelines. My biggest gripe was that the glossary didn't contain half of the terms that it should have!
It's okay to take a break from reading now and again. I often take a day or even a week sometimes. I read so much now because I didn't read very much at all while I was in college.
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Date: 8 April 2009 12:07 am (UTC)I can't disagree about River of Gods' beginning being too confusing and the prose bein clunky at times. I think I liked the ideas in River of Gods better than I did in Brazyl, though, and for whatever reason (which might well be very subjective), I liked the way he presents the setting more organic and vivid than I did in Brazyl where everything seemed very fake. I didn't really like any character in Brazyl either.
Haha, I never even checked with the glossary until I finished reading (a habit I got as a reader in my non native language, I think), but I agree, it lacked some words. The text may have also used to many of portuguese words gratuitously, as well.
My lack of motivation for reading is freaking me out. I've always read a great deal, it's part of my core identity. Reading only 3 books in 3 months... I find it scary.
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Date: 8 April 2009 02:17 pm (UTC)I've read quite a few of Cherryh's other books too. Besides the ones I already mentioned, most of the Alliance-Union universe (though not all) as well as some of the oddball ones like The Hanan Rebellion, The Rider duology, and The Paladin. I've had trouble getting into her latest stuff. Maybe I've just moved on as a reader.
Yeah, Brasyl isn't for everyone. It'll be interesting to see what his next book on Turkey will be like.
Reading is part of my core identity too so I definitely know how you feel. Sorry you've hit a bit of a rough patch. *hugs* Just hang in there!